Entries by Jennifer Brundage

Conference ideas

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Affiliations staff have the privilege of attending regional museum conferences throughout the year, which help to keep us in touch with potential issues facing affiliates.  This year, affiliations staff have attended at least six regional conferences across the nation.   As expected, the conferences offered tons of ideas and stimulated the energy to try them!  We’ll be sharing those […]

Smithsonian Teachers’ Night

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    Thanks to our local affiliates who made the Affiliations table at Smithsonian Teachers’ Night such a smashing success!!  Over 1600 teachers attended Friday night’s event (October 20), and Affiliations staff could hardly keep up with their zeal for materials! We had a nice sampling of American history resources – a lesson plan website on the French […]

Do you have an experience design strategy?

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In conjunction with its renovation, the American History Museum has sponsored a staff development series, bringing leading consultants, authors and thinkers to SI to challenge our paradigms about museum-going and our attitudes toward an experience design strategy. A few months ago, we heard from David Norton of Stone Mantel (gostonemantel.com), presenting research from the influential book, Experience Economy: […]

Tourism and Dining – end of the summer pleasures at Cooper-Hewitt

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I had the pleasure of experiencing two lovely exhibitions at Cooper-Hewitt this weekend.  They are closing soon, so if you find yourself in NYC before the end of October 2006, treat yourself and do not miss them!  (cooperhewitt.org)   It might surprise you to know that Cooper-Hewitt has the largest collection of works by Frederic […]

Why do we collect this stuff? Does anybody ever look at it?

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…the intriguing title to the final lecture in an excellent series by Undersecretary for Science, David Evans.  The entire series is available online at https://www2.si.edu/research/spotlight/lectures_2006.html. The question that formed his title is a good one, considering that the largest portion of SI’s collection, some 126.5 million objects, reside in the Natural History Museum.  And did you […]

Dynamo!

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Check out Heritage Harbor’s new website – heritageharbor.org – and the great coverage they got in kicking off the redevelopment of the appropriately-named Dynamo House, a former power plant that will become the Museum’s home in a few years.  They’ve also started an education blog at heritageharboreducation.blogspot.com.   Congratulations Heritage Harbor!